So, Buddhism. Opinions? I get the impression it's quite a respectable 'religion', because it largely focuses on lifetime meditation, doesn't dwell on what happens when you die, and doesn't act as if it has anything to prove. I could be wrong about all this though.

Buddhism is pretty awesome, at least the westernized concepts I've learned. I came into contact with Buddhism in high school and eventually bought books and started meditating. It's a very practical way to live your life really, and I'm not talking about being a monastic monk, but in following the basic layman precepts and aspiring to the 8 fold path. Daily meditation and daily exercise are important parts of Buddhism which is very respectable.

Mind you, there are "crazies" in all religions, and Buddhism is no exception... and I'm not saying there are no crazy atheists.

My trick to not getting too bent up about this stuff (and politics too) is to view philosophies as tools. Does it help you and others in life? If so, it's a great tool, regardless of truth. I say this despite being someone who finds great beauty in seeking truth.

Science, like formal logic, is a limited tool for determining truths with the fewest assumptions possible. Myself, I feel there is a Truth that cannot be defined with words. This is much closer to belief implied by Gödel's incompleteness theorems than that of an animistic God. The ideas could be one and the same, but it seems extremely implausible.

The problem with this is you view it as showing how atheists are wrong while the comic actually supports them (or agnostics anyway, depending on how we're defining things). If those flees has studied their world carefully, they would have lots of evidence supporting the existence of Dog. We have studied our world and the story it tells - a story perhaps written by God Himself - directly contradicts all the creation stories written by Man before, including one written by Man a couple thousand years ago in many, many ways. Why do you ignore God and listen to the conflicting tales of Man? Perhaps you don't believe the parts of the Bible that are direct contradictions are "the literal ones" but I have talked with people who do. This seems blasphemous to me yet I don't seem to hear of denominations bearing the same opinion. What's your take on that, Neil?

Another problem with it is that they're also trying to draw a parallel between the world they live in and the alleged invisible creator of that world. A more accurate human equivalent would be people that don't believe the Earth exists (or indeed, for example, people that believe it's flat; we're looking at you, B.o.B).

I don't have the time to reply to everyone in full at the moment, but I will say a couple of things.

@GullyAsking me to teach about God without the Bible is like asking you to teach me science without a textbook. It's silly. If you refuse to listen to the Bible, then there's little point in me trying to teach you what I know about God. In the same fashion, if I refuse to listen to scientific knowledge, there's little point trying to teach me science. I will reply more in depth to you later.

@bambamI just wanted to thank you for calling me a deluded person with irrational beliefs. I could easily say the same thing about you, but where does that get us? Not very far.

What you should do is acknowledge that your so called "warnings" are unwelcome to people that don't share your faith or negligible criteria for proof and exclude yourself from rationale discussions about these topics knowing that you have nothing to offer of value to add for the people that have them.

If you shared my faith there would be no point warning you. As for being unwelcome, bad news usually is. That doesn't make it any less true or any less important to share. I won't apologize for making you uncomfortable. You should be. As for being negligible criteria for proof that is merely your opinion. Saying I have nothing of value to add is again, just your opinion, not to mention how rude that is. I find it funny you feel the need to repeatedly insult me. It's a sign of insecurity.

OK, I take it back. It appears that 90% of Edgar's post was copied from copies of the Bible online, and he's just trying to trick us into wasting our lives reading it too...

Yes, I used online references to quote from. It's a lot easier than trying to type it all out by hand. And if you noticed, for the most part I quoted from the New Revised Standard Version, which is an excellent study bible. It uses modern, natural English, and is one of the best translations available. No tricks, just an attempt to show relevant biblical knowledge. I even boldfaced the important parts for people like you who won't even bother to read what I posted to save you time.

@Neil RoyDid you read my response to you in my last post? Heaven and Hell are biblical and there IS an initial judgement when a person dies, that decides where they go. Again, read about Lazarus and the Rich Man, and about how God is God of the living, not the dead.

And as a general reply. Worship the Creator, not the creation. Put your faith in God, not in man or his (very limited) knowledge. I feel very very sorry for anyone who looks at the perfection and wonder of nature and the universe and yet still can't see God in it. Do you all honestly believe that life, Earth, and the Universe are all just some kind of happy (and unbelievably improbable) accident? There is no doubt in my mind that there is a Divine hand at work in all of creation.

As for being unwelcome, bad news usually is. That doesn't make it any less true or any less important to share. I won't apologize for making you uncomfortable. You should be.

I'm not uncomfortable in the least. Keep the threats coming if that floats your boat. Just spare us the walls of bullshit quotes from the Bible. I prefer to read everything people say in a conversation, but when you quote large walls of mindless drivel it's extremely tiring to try to work through it. Surely you're intelligent enough to comprehend how it doesn't hold any weight with non-believers? If not, see again Gull's Lord of the Rings reference. Once you acknowledge that the Bible is completely meaningless to us it should save us a lot of trouble and needless tension.

As for being negligible criteria for proof that is merely your opinion. Saying I have nothing of value to add is again, just your opinion, not to mention how rude that is. I find it funny you feel the need to repeatedly insult me. It's a sign of insecurity.

Calling you delusional is not meant as an insult. It's simply stating what I believe to be the truth based upon the available evidence. It is an observation that believers in deities, particularly those of Christianity and Islam and other mainstream religions, appear to be delusional.

Quoting the Bible is useless unless its claims can be verified and they cannot. If you'd settle on admitting that you believe what you believe based solely on "faith" (i.e., without evidence) then we wouldn't be arguing. We wouldn't even have anything to discuss. You, Neil, and the humorously absent OP insist on trying to "prove" that God exists when it cannot be proven and so you force us to acknowledge your fallacies. The only conclusions appear to be that you're either dishonest or delusional. I don't believe that you're intentionally trolling us so that leaves delusional.

I even boldfaced the important parts for people like you who won't even bother to read what I posted to save you time.

I always try to read through every word spoken in a thread. I don't like to skip parts. You never know what you're missing. Even just the boldfaced Bible quotes were painful to get through. I do bother to read what people post. That's why it's infuriating when you post things that I already know to be wastes of my time. I still tried to give it a chance, and read through it, and I'll never get that time back.

Do you all honestly believe that life, Earth, and the Universe are all just some kind of happy (and unbelievably improbable) accident? There is no doubt in my mind that there is a Divine hand at work in all of creation.

Yes, for the most part, although the "happy" part is entirely subjective. You'll note that for most of the creatures on the planet life is a constant struggle and that death appears to usually be quite harsh. Modern day humans and their pets happen to live in somewhat exceptional circumstances, disconnected from that reality.

It's funny. Most people don't have the slightest clue what goes on for the meat that they consume daily to arrive on their grocery store shelves or on their plate, and when they're given a glimpse it usually makes them sick.

I do agree, life can be very beautiful and wondrous. Even when it is horrific it can sometimes be quite beautiful. However, I don't need to invoke any magician in the sky for this to be so. I can rationalize it through the nature of the universe alone. I actually find that to be much more beautiful than the notion of "God" ever was to me (remember, I used to be a believer). The idea that all of this just happens by itself somewhat chaotically is much more beautiful to me than the notion that an omnipotent mastermind engineered everything down to the tiniest detail.

If a creator had engineered all of this then it would appear clear that it must have made a lot of mistakes (what's even more funny is the Bible even allegedly detailing God's regret over the "flesh" bit, which seems to acknowledge that he's not perfect, which I find as further evidence that it was created by man...). I'm referring to what most believers brush off as God's "mysterious ways".

Anybody can invoke magic to explain anything. It's not useful. That's why in this age of knowledge and discovery many of us abandon the thought. You're welcome to believe in magic. I find it a very beautiful idea. I prefer to limit mine to imagination, fantasy, and video games. If you choose to invoke it in real life then keep it to yourself.

Somewhat. Yes. Aside from the accusations of abuse, it was a tolerable post.

Append:

It's also worth pointing out that delusions are nothing to be ashamed of. They can be pathological mental illnesses, in which case people are merely victims of their biology. In other cases, it's just our fallible minds playing tricks on us. It can be extremely difficult to make absolute sense of the world. Our brains are amazing organs, but they're much more fallible than we think. The only thing for certain is that every one of us is flawed. And that's OK. Some of our flaws can be overcome, at least.

For what it's worth (not much in this thread) I think it's backwards to look at the world through the lens of "This is all so perfect, there had to have been a creator". It's probably more useful to look at it from the opposite direction: We see what is because that's how things happened to turn out, as opposed to the infinite other ways things could have gone.

We can observe what is because it happened. We can't observe what isn't because it simply didn't happen, not because it couldn't have. If the chain of events that led to us had worked out differently, some different lifeform than us would be here making the same argument of "it's too perfect". We are not special except in the sense that we are here in lieu of any number of equally plausible possibilities. For that we may count ourselves very lucky, but it's not evidence of a design any more than a coin flip coming up in your favor is inherent evidence of a design.

This quote from Douglas Adams is relevant I think:

Quote:

This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.

I suspect that for a lot of believers in "creation" they look at things exactly in reverse and that's why they can't understand the logic. Where I think atheists generally see this as a somewhat physically guided chaos that just happened to arrive here so far, I think creationists see it as this being the only possible destination and questioning what could have lead us to here. If you presuppose that this is the only possible outcome then it becomes a bit difficult to comprehend things like "evolution", and a creator might start to make the most sense. If you look at things in reverse then suddenly you can comprehend how it all might have developed slowly through natural processes.

I think creationists understand evolution to be a literal transformation. A bird turns into a frog. Instead, it's more like a bird that was supposed to grow wings with an approximately 23 cm span grows them 20 cm and for whatever reason that happens to give it a competitive advantage in its particular space-time environment. It survives for a reasonable period and reproduces successfully and its genes carry on, increasing the chances that the approximately 20 cm wing span will continue.

Another bird of the same species happens to grow wings with an approximately 27 cm span. Now depending on the exact characteristics bigger or smaller can be an advantage or a disadvantage. In this case we'll imagine it's a disadvantage. That bird is less likely to survive, and even if it does survive perhaps it's less likely to mate because the opposite sex just happens to find it less attractive because of how they just happened to be formed. So the 27 cm span is less likely to be carried on.

Now carry that process on for 100 million years. The environment changes. The birds of this particular species, as with all species', are constantly changing ever so slightly, giving certain members advantages and certain other members disadvantages. Over all, the advantaged lot succeeds the most.

If you were to look at the original example bird 100 million years ago and compare it to 100 million years later you might find that they've changed noticeably. Not just in one way. Maybe in several ways. Maybe they began to change one way, and then the environment changed and the opposite variation became more successful and they reverted somewhat. Maybe we wouldn't even classify them as the same species anymore. The original "species" might no longer even exist if the chaotic "design" of nature preferred some variation of it.

Note, this isn't a design as in a consciousness making decisions about what might work better for the next generation. It's about the biological processes in the reproductive system of plants and animals being an imperfect cloning mechanism. When things reproduce they don't create an exact clone. They create a very similar, related organism, but one that is slightly different. Some of those differences are surprising to us. They're an "accident" of the imperfection of the process. This is what evolution means. Some of these "accidents" are beneficial and some of them are detrimental. Some of them have no effect either way. The beneficial ones if they happen enough will tend to transform the species into something different and better suited to their environment.

There's no sudden transformation from a bird to a frog. There's a very, very, very gradual transition from a thing that swims in the ocean and breathes through gills to a thing that can absorb oxygen through the atmosphere and can walk on land. Not all at once, in one animal, but in very small, gradual steps, over the course of many years and many generations of animals. At some point you will have a hybrid that may be able to do both, albeit perhaps poorly. And eventually that species may transform into something that can walk on land better and breath directly from the atmosphere better, but cannot breath in water anymore or swim well.

Evolution is not some black magic. It's a rational, logical explanation for the life of the planet; and even the universe itself.

Asking me to teach about God without the Bible is like asking you to teach me science without a textbook. It's silly.

I know this was directed at Gull, but isn't it easy to teach Science without a textbook?

Quote:

If you refuse to listen to the Bible, then there's little point in me trying to teach you what I know about God.

Phew!

The Bible is just a heavily edited collection of old books. It is a man made document and is not evidence of a creator or supernatural phenomena like prayer healing. If it really did contain any evidence you could demonstrate that without referencing it, much like you can with any other textbook.

Of course, I'm of the opinion that it is impossible to demonstrate the existence of God(s) as described by those who have one.

I'm also of the opinion that the reason for that is that God(s) do not exist outside of the human mind that creates them (but they are very real on the inside, and have physiological structures that have evolved to necessitate them, which is evident in many current studies).

Asking me to teach about God without the Bible is like asking you to teach me science without a textbook. It's silly.

Not true actually. The best teachers will take the time to understand their pupils and tailor their teaching accordingly. A textbook or a bible can never do this. Obviously printed resources can help, but you need both. Now please note, teaching - not preaching. Do not preach.

Quote:

I won't apologize for making you uncomfortable. You should be.

As before, I am willing to accept that you genuinely consider this material to be fact and want the best for everyone. However, that leaves us at an impasse, because I am equally certain of Christianity being fiction that was able to spread precisely because people put this kind of threatening material into it[1], and I am not going to buy it.

None of this invalidates the fact (yes, I consider it fact) that religions provide a valuable belief system for a lot of people. What I would like to do is ask you (again) what you gain from Christianity and why you believe. Neil had a great answer to this question. What about you?

References

Disclaimer: vastly oversimplifying how it worked in history, and also not the whole picture because of course people would have rejected Christianity if it didn't also offer good parts. I'm just trying to summarise why I don't buy it as succinctly as possible.

I know this was directed at Gull, but isn't it easy to teach Science without a textbook?

Off-topic: I seriously want to briefly learn practical applications of historically important scientific discoveries that would be relatively easy to understand and implement with a modern understanding of the world...

Things like electricity and batteries and lighting, long distance communication, even steam engines. Imagine if tech reverted back to pre-Industrial Revolution due to Plot Point(tm). How many people would be able to even begin on restoring certain useful advances? So many of us depend, but don't even understand or know to create a rudimentary implementation of these inventions...

And if you get transported back in time, you could make a major difference in world events! Imagine if a country of your choice had even crude wireless communication back in the 1600s! Or railroads! (I suppose much further and the language in, e.g. the British Isles, would be a major barrier...) Heck, even proper sanitation and hygiene would put you at an advantage...

But it would mostly be fun.

(I'd also include other non-practical but otherwise interesting things in there, like a cloud chamber and general experiments such as measuring CO2's warming capabilities.)

It's really incredible what is possible to learn or witness about our world with easily attainable supplies and tools. Example: we can see cosmic particles with a cloud chamber--particles that are otherwise non-existent and invisible to us.

Guys the whole point of the video was to show that there was no need to go into the details in the Bible to prove anything. all we need to do is discuss the logical equations that were in the VID. after one is unable to refute the arguments and unable to provide anything logical other then a creator.

The video is a joke, right? I mean, it's clearly a creationist with no proof, no understanding of abiogenesis, no understanding of the proof for evolution....just another creationist who says "it's all so amazing, it must have been god.

Sorry for the late reply but I had a bit of an accident. Broke my arm so its quite difficult to type. i was quite swollen before I got to the hospital for a cast and it has only gotten worse. http://i.imgur.com/foVwt4G.jpg

Anyways, Neil, I appreciated your response. I do try to be a good person. Sure I have had a few slip ups in my life but over all I would say I have done far more good than bad. Still, it gets under my skin when religious folk judge others based on silly details (such as being gay/lesbian). For what its worth, my highly religious friend is totally cool with me and was on my side about how out of line that pastor was acting towards me. I don't really hold a grudge against all religious people, just the ridiculous ones.

Anyways, Neil, I appreciated your response. I do try to be a good person. Sure I have had a few slip ups in my life but over all I would say I have done far more good than bad. Still, it gets under my skin when religious folk judge others based on silly details (such as being gay/lesbian). For what its worth, my highly religious friend is totally cool with me and was on my side about how out of line that pastor was acting towards me. I don't really hold a grudge against all religious people, just the ridiculous ones.

We have all slipped up. I feel the important thing is that we keep trying to do right, learn from our mistakes and move on.

When it comes to "judging" people, I really don't do that, or I try not to. But there are certain things the bible states are right and things that it clearly states are wrong. I will educate people on what the bible says, that is often misinterpreted as me judging, it is not, it is God judging what is right or wrong. Now if you don't believe in God, not a problem, you shouldn't be bothered by it honestly. If however you do believe in God, and decide to attend a church, I feel that one should not expect to attend and do their own thing without any reguard for the rules that govern it. It's like any organization you are apart of, religious or not. They all usually have rules that must be followed in order to be a member. Churches are no different. The bible contains those rules, and it says that homosexuality is wrong. Now I won't get into a debate on the subject, I'm just saying what the bible says. The rest is between you and your Creator, He will be the one judging, not me.

Actually, the bible does tell church members not to judge those outside of the church, so what you do with your life, if you are not a church member, is nobody's business. But the bible does tell us to judge those who are in the church and lays down some rules on how to deal with situations (in a kind manner, but you do have to deal with them) and even has rules for expelling people from the church who refuse to obey God's laws and continue to be wicked.

If you wish to believe, attend and ultimately be saved from destruction, than you need to seriously consider that if there is a God, and you wish to attend and worship, than should you not be obeying Him to the best of your ability?

As I said, I don't want a debate, and I don't judge, God does that. But for me to sit here and say homosexuality, or drunkenness, or adultery etc... is okay, would be a lie, and it would be leading you astray, which would ultimately get me in trouble for not at least trying to help you and save you. Because I care about your future, not because I hate. If you see what I mean.

You claim to disavow yourself from churches because you don't agree with them, and then you claim that anybody that believes in god is subject to the beliefs of the church. Do you not see how hypocritical you're being?

Claiming it's God judging, not you, is a lie and a cop-out. You don't know what God is doing at this point in time and anybody claiming to know with absolute certainty the actions of God today or in the future is absolutely lying and projecting their own beliefs on others while hiding behind the idea of God to avoid the consequences for their actions.

You can claim to know God's actions in the past by asserting that the events of the Bible are true. That doesn't prove anything, but at least it gives your claim context to work from. To claim to know what God is doing today or tomorrow asserts that you are personally in contact with him, and you can prove this. Since we all know this is not actually the case then you need to provide evidence for how you could possibly know the actions of God today or reword your phrases to afford them doubt. You believe God is judging people for their homosexuality based on what you've read in the Bible and the moral rules you've constructed as a result of your life, but you don't know that he is judging them today, and you can't know for sure what he will conclude in the end.

Regardless of what actions you believe God to take, the actions that you take, such as threatening homosexuals with punishment for their lifestyle, are your own actions. You can be judged for them, not only by "God", but also by the rest of us. You are not above judgment yourself.

Stop pretending to speak for God. It stands to reason that he wouldn't take kindly to that either.